GameCentral takes part in a 64-player battle in DICE’s new first person shooter, and probes the game’s producer about Star Wars and Mirror’s Edge 2.

With all the drama surrounding the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 it’s almost been forgotten that this Christmas will also see another heavyweight bout between two great gaming rivals. Call Of Duty: Ghosts and Battlefield 4 are both at E3 this week and will inevitability end up as two of the biggest-selling games of the year.

Unlike Activision’s game though Battlefield 4 was playable on the show floor. And not in some behind closed door event but right out at the front of EA’s stand, with 64 people playing at once on the PC version.

As can imagine that took up quite a bit of space, with the front of EA’s stand transformed into a sea of high-end PCs, and with two raised platforms for the two opposing commanders to take stock of their armies.

Naturally we couldn’t resist having a go (two in fact, thanks to the organiser not noticing we hadn’t left) and you probably won’t be too shocked to learn that the game looks absolutely stunning. The map was the downtown area of a large city, filled with skyscrapers and separated by a number of bridges across a gently flowing river.

If you watch the footage below you won’t need us to convince you the graphics are amazing, but the sense of immersion is something else when you’re actually in the game. As the battle raged the entire city began to fill with smoke and debris, so that by the end of the match you could barely see where you were going for all the dust in the air.

Luckily then Battlefield 4 has a newly improved HUD system that more clearly indicates where friendly and enemy troops and vehicles are located. Some of this information, we suspect, is provided by the commander but since we didn’t get to have a go on the Commander Mode itself (it was always an EA rep doing it) we’re not entirely sure.

A returning feature from the PC-only Battlefield 2, Commander Mode offers a top-down view of the map and turns the game into a sort of real-time strategy game. The Commander can’t force anyone to go anywhere, but they can set-up waypoints and call-in support – as well as bark out verbal suggestions and warnings via a microphone.

We don’t pretend to be the best Battlefield players in the world but we are quite handy with a tank, so jumping aboard we went trundling off to try and secure the first bridge. But it was blocked by a series of bollards, which mysteriously retracted after a minute or so of trying to blow them up. We assume this was also the commander, unless it was some happy coincidence of our team capturing a nearby control point.

The game mode we were playing involved capturing a series of these, but with the two armies meeting in the middle the fighting quickly grew to a fierce standstill. Our tank was eventually blown up by the enemy’s, but afterwards we fared fairly well on foot by swimming across the river and emerging to knife an enemy in the back while he wasn’t looking.

We even did quite well taking out a nearby sniper as well, but once our presence was made obvious to the rest (and perhaps the opposing commander) we were quickly mown down in a deadly crossfire.

In terms of new gameplay features there was little of any real note, although the much more destructible scenery has a significant impact on your tactics. We didn’t see a skyscraper fall down, as it did in one of the conference demos, but we did start getting repeated warnings that they were becoming unstable in one of the matches – which would have been some sight to see.

How any of this is going to work on the current gen consoles we don’t know, considering what a fudge Battlefield 3 was. However, we did get to speak to DICE executive producer Patrick Bach afterwards, who assured us that the next gen console versions would be a lot closer to the PC version than has ever been possible before…

GC: And I’m guessing Mirror’s Edge you won’t answer any question on either?

PB: No.

GC: OK, so is Mirror’s Edge really good?

PB: Yes! [laughs]

GC: [laughs] OK, we better talk about Battlefield 4 then. By coincidence I happened to interview Infinity Ward earlier, about Call Of Duty, and I mentioned the fact that you’ve started talking about 60 frames per second now. And although he was very complimentary about you in general he did say that it was about more than just frame rate – it was the whole question of latency and responsiveness – and that you didn’t quite understand that yet. I wonder how you would respond to that?

PB: I think it’s very important to understand that it’s not only about frame rate, and I think everyone in the business is very aware of that. But then again I think we’re working really, really hard to bring the complete package when it comes to that. I have hundreds of FPSes on my PC and they haven’t had frame rate problems, and these new consoles allow us to move up the scale and also achieving greater destruction, 64-players, vehicles, etc., etc. Which to us is the core of the franchise.

I do think the frame rate is important, but the current consoles don’t allow us to have 60 frames per second in our games and so I think the next generation for us is very, very positive in what it will allow. And again the question is about the package, the game is not only about movement, guns, and those things. It’s also about what you do in the game: destruction, vehicles, we have a lot of focus on teamplay, so to me a great shooter is not only about frame rate and it’s not only about the number of players.

Games are starting to become so complex now, so there can’t just be one thing that you sell your game on. But again we were getting the question of, ‘Oh, why don’t you have 60 fps’ and now that we have the power to do that of course we will use it.

GC: All through this current generation there have been lots of great looking games but they’ve often been mired by poor frame rates or screen tearing and other problems. Are you confident that anyone using Frostbite 3 will not have any of those problems?

PB: It’s not the engine in itself that creates the game, it’s just a tool for the developer.

GC: But are you confident that we won’t be seeing a bunch of EA games in the future, that use Frostbite 3, with those sort of frame rate problems?

PB: Frostbite 3 gives a lot of options and you’ll see how the different teams within EA are using the engine. You’ll see a multitude of results that have nothing to do with what Battlefield is. I think that’s very important as well you see, that the engine itself will not prevent you from going 60 but it will not automatically make it 60 if the developer does not think that’s important.

GC: So given the greater power of the new consoles, and the fact that you’re already talking about 64-player battles on them, do you think there’ll be much more parity between the console versions and the PC this time round?

PB: I think the challenge of course is that the PC is moving as we speak, so we don’t know what PCs will be capable of in two months…

GC: So does that mean we could soon be seeing 128-player battles on the PC and the consoles will fall behind again?

PB: No. No, we’re staying with 64 and that’s a design decision for us, first of all because more players doesn’t automatically mean more fun. I think that’s very important, even though we have quite a few players now with 64 it’s more than you think. It’s not the number that makes it good, it’s how we treat that number and how we design around that number. So I think we are now looking at getting more coherent design, since you have more platforms with the ability to have 64 players. So maps can be more easily designed for 64 players and getting them perfect.

Because again, going to 128 or 256, or whatever number you want would not make the game automatically better. And I think we’ve seen that with other games where they add more players and people say, ‘Yay!’ because they think the game would be better. But then they play it and they find out that it is not fun. We see a lot of players in Battlefield 3 on PC where they actually take the number down because they think it’s more fun to play with 32 players. So we give people the ability to choose up to 64 players, not only 64.

GC: So is that the thinking behind the return of Commander Mode?

PB: Yes.

GC: Why did you remove that in the first place though, because some fans I know accused you of simply dumbing down?

PB: No, it wasn’t that. I think there was some design flaws in the original Commander Mode that we didn’t like. There was some really cool things with it that we did like and we have to rethink the whole implementation of it, to make it not only fit better with the game but also looking at how you actually play. Because what we’re doing now is that with dedicated players to play Commander Mode… it’s not a jump in/jump out thing where one minute you’re a commander and one minute a solider. You have to dedicate yourself.

The experience is also about me versus the other commander, so the focus is more like a game of chess where the players on the ground are your chess pieces and if they do good you will get more toys to play with and you will get more benefits as a commander. And your ultimate goal is to actually beat the other commander.

GC: I don’t think it was you, but there seemed to be a lot of comments from guys at DICE before the reveal of Battlefield 4 that implied it would have a near future setting, was that ever considered?

PB: No. I don’t know where that came from, it was probably a confusion with near future as a concept and dealing with events that are not current.

GC: The obvious problem with keeping the same setting is that the vehicles and basic weapons are the same, they have to be the same or they wouldn’t be realistic. Which is clearly going to get old at some point. So at what stage do you decide you need to change settings… and I’ve backed myself into a corner there haven’t I? You’re not going to answer that are you?

PB: [laughs] No. But you’re right, going modern military means that you have a lot of connections to the real world which are of course positive. But there are limitations, you cannot just go bananas and started adding in fantasy weapons.

GC: But other games can go bananas, like the Titanfall guys can just make something up if they think they need it. So how have you kept the weapons and vehicles fresh for Battlefield 4? Ah, that’s a better question isn’t it?

PB: [laughs] That is a good question!

GC: I get there in the end, it’s been a long day.

PB: [laughs] First of all we are refreshing the whole arsenal, when you go through the guns you will see there are a lot of new guns. We’ve changed some old ones and we’ve added a lot of new ones. You’ve got more guns now than you’ve ever had in any Battlefield game. And also, going deeper into the guns – guns are quite complicated. You don’t have to go into the future to get your weapons and make them up, we already have everything from additional optics to canted sights, you have more slots to fiddle around with a gun. We can add more customisation so that even handguns have it this time round.

There’s a lot of depth in the guns that we haven’t seen in Battlefield games before, that we’re adding into Battlefield 4. So I think that players when they actually get their hands on it will see it as quite a fresh change in the way we treat our guns. And it’s actually more fun to play around with the guns and customise them.

GC: I know you’ve been relatively willing to acknowledge that Battlefield’s single-player campaigns are never a strong as some of your competitor, but I notice the single-player is more or less all we’ve so far – until this multiplayer demo at E3. Is that because we’re at that stage of the PR cycle or are you just that much more confident this time around?

PB: I think in general…

GC: Because I remember you were fairly confident before Battlefield 3 and that didn’t really turn out that great.

PB: We’re more confident now than ever, but it is quite hard for us to know what is a great single-player for Battlefield.

GC: Sure.

PB: How do you make it not the same but still different enough, if you see what I mean? The challenge with single-player of course is to keep the core idea of what Battlefield stands for, with the freedom of choice of vehicles and big open infantry battles, and getting that variation of the multiplayer sessions and carrying that over into a narrative that is a story in itself. So to us the challenge is, ‘What are the similarities and what are the differences between the two?’ And that’s what we’re trying to figure out.

GC: Was there no thought to go back to a more straightforward simulation of the multiplayer, with bots instead of players?

PB: No, no. We actually talked about it quite a lot and every time we talked about it we went back to the fact that you could just play multiplayer instead. Because there’s no point in simulating multiplayer when you can play multiplayer. It’s more about if you want to play multiplayer but win the map, so to speak, I think that’s a different discussion you should have.

GC: But Battlefield is a complicated game with a long learning curve. You have that typical complaint of a new player that they wandered around for 20 minutes not seeing anyone and then got shot by a sniper they never knew was there. If the single-player was closer to the multiplayer then that’s a problem you could help to reduce.

PB: So, of course they will learn the controls. They will learn and understand how the game works at its core. You will get to try out different things of course, but then again it’s always impossible to learn how to play the multiplayer without being in a real multiplayer match. Especially because every multiplayer will be different from the other one, because there are so many moving parts. And new maps will add new challenges, so it doesn’t really matter if you’re good on one map, you might be c*** on another map.

So I think the whole thing with Battlefield and what you can learn in single-player is to think about tactics, think about how you move, where you take cover. Use cover, use destruction, use the things that you have around you. And kind of search the environment for the right tactics, and that’s also something we’re pushing quite hard – that you should be able to look at the environment and think that, ‘If I do this I should be able to cope with this situation’.

And that’s what we’re trying to achieve with all the dynamism we’re trying to add to the game, so that it feels natural to just jump into the game and play it. But then again if you don’t think about things and you’re standing there in the street with a gun, someone will probably try and take you out.

GC: And just a couple of other quick things, can you assure fans that you’ve learnt from the problems with getting access to official servers with Battlefield 3 – and that we won’t have a repeat of that situation with Battlefield 4?

PB: Well, I think the problem that we bumped into was that the game was quite popular. We launched the rent-a-server program, where you can actually rent your servers, and that turned extremely popular. So people rented all the servers that we had available, which left very few official servers and when a lot of people jumped into the game they ended up in these crazy modes where earning a thousand tickets would take like two hours…

GC: But if that’s the first time you’ve ever played Battlefield online, it’s also likely to be your last.

PB: Maybe, yes. So what we’re trying to do now is that we’re trying to make sure that we have enough official servers and it’s easy for the player in the UI to find a server that is normal. But then again we let people play around with the settings and create games that are very focused…

GC: Oh sure, it’s great that you encourage that. But there should always be the option of playing the game normally.

PB: Yes, definitely.

GC: And just finally, are you confident that the Frostbite 3 engine will produce the most impressive graphics of the next generation?

PB: Ahh… I’m very confident that we have the opportunity to do something that is extremely impressive. I would lie if I said that I am certain that it will, because you never know – there are extremely talented people out there with engines that are very competent.

GC: What else has impressed you recently? Apart from your own game, what’s the best-looking game you’ve seen?

PB: I think Metal Gear Solid V looks pretty good. I think there are quite a few games that are impressive when it comes to down to just the visuals. But then again we don’t want to compare only to other shooters.

GC: Oh, I didn’t mean just shooters.

PB: So we look at sports games, we look at everything to see what we can learn, what are other people doing, what can we be smarter about when making games? I think in general to us it’s about immersion and creating the right feeling of playing game. And that involves graphics of course, but it also involves audio – which is something we’re really pushing for – everything from how the gun handles to how it feels to fly a helicopter. And of course the dynamics of the map, the whole evolution of that process is very, very important.

GC: That’s great, well thanks very much for your time and… oh what the heck I’ll ask you about Star Wars anyway. Can you confirm that the teaser trailer was representative of the final game? That it will actually have snowspeeders and AT-ATs in it – that wasn’t just some stock imagery someone came up with?

PB: I cannot confirm that but I can tell you that the teaser you saw was built by us and LucasArts, so…